Kindle Publishing: Where Do You Begin?

Many of you know one of my goals this year is to get several books self published both in Kindle publishing format and through CreateSpace or some other self-publishing format.

 

The writing and creation stage of this is the most fascinating part of the venture for me. But I am looking forward to the technical phase as well. The marketing and promotion, not so much. But I am going to persevere and face those demons when I get to that phase.

 

For now we need to figure out where to start in our Kindle publishing adventure. I will be reviewing and following along with Geoff Shaw’s Kindling course to keep us on course.

 

Many writers will want to just start writing. We writers all have a ton of books just waiting to come out of mind onto the page. This probably isn’t the best course though.

 

Creating your Kindle publication starts way before that first word is ever typed or written. You will need to decide on several things.

 

First, will you be writing a fiction piece or non-fiction? Will it be a series or a standalone book? Will it contain images or be written word only?

 

You need to conduct some niche research to see what is selling in your chosen area as well. One way to do this is to see what is already selling on the Kindle.

 

Another is to look at the Amazon Tag Cloud. It shows that fiction is a HOT seller! A tag cloud will instantly give you a view of what niche is popular – fiction, fantasy, paranormal, romance.

 

 

 

Here is a snapshot of the non-fiction best sellers on the day this post was written.

As you can see there are a lot of categories with sub-categories so look through them to find the niche you are interested in and get an idea of what is selling.

 

 

Dig down in each area to find topics and books that grab your interest.

 

Jot down any ideas from those you find interesting.

 

Make a column for both fiction and non-fiction as you begin to narrow down the categories. List the category, the sub categories, and the titles of books that grab your attention.

Another way to find what is popular on kindle is by doing a search in your category using the popularity search feature.

This will give you an idea of how many of these books are sold and how popular the niche is.

 

So if I wanted to create a book on lose belly fat I would do a search like this:

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first six are shown here.

 

When looking at a search term this way look at these criteria to help guide you:

 

***There are least 4 pages of search results but no more than 20 pages total.

***There is at least one big name best seller on the first page.

***At least one unknown seller on the first page.

***Many of the books will have over a 100,000 ranking or more.

 

Looks like its time to narrow down my focus. I already have several titles ready to be outlined in 4 different niches both fiction and non-fiction as well as a children’s book series so I have my work cut out for me on choosing which to go with first.

 

I will talk more about ranking in the next post on the Kindle publishing series.

 

 

What is your favorite way to narrow down your niche topic for your book?

 

Leave a comment below.